How much hp is too much hp ?

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A prot warrior friend of mine tells me that the only stat worth having is stamina because of the DR on all the prot warrior tank stats. From doing some reading of my own (Im not a warrior, or prot) I see that there is some discussion as to mastery or stamina stacking.

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I don't want to say that your friend is wrong, but that much Stam, at his gear level, is way too much.

The level of stam you want to get while tanking depends on whether you are tanking 10m or 25m and normal or heroic.

From what I can see on wowprogress, his guild is doing 10 mans, and in 10 man you don't need anywhere near as much stam as in 25 mans, as everything hits for way less, and only some fights actually need more stam than others.

What I would suggest for him is to gem for mastery instead (and you could let him know that there are no DRs on mastery either iirc) and just keep 2 Stam trinkets on him for the fights where he needs more EH (which, I'll repeat myself, are going to be excessively rare on 10m).

Moreover, I think Mastery is a much better smoothing stat than Stam to make your damage intake more regular and predictable. Also, should he gem for mastery his healers will have to waste much less mana on him: Gemming stam makes you take the full hit and survive it, and then you have to heal back up all that damage. Mastery will make you block a part of the hit, so %-wise you might lose the same amount of HP but number-wise the healers will have much less to heal.

Last things, warriors don't need as much HP as other tanks as they have 2 awesome active mitigation skills in SBlk and SBar. If he uses them correctly he can smooth all the damage spikes without having to gem for stam.

I don't think I've said anything stupid or made any enormous mistakes, but Estarriol will probably check this thread behind me and add anything I may have missed.

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Heavy stam stacking is usually more of a 25man tactic. Since there are more healers to keep the tanks alive, the overall damage taken isn't a big deal, and the higher stam allows for more vengeance for the tank, and less over healing for the healers.

In 10 man though typically most tanks are going to favor reducing their overall damage taken over stam stacking, aside from a few fights where an extra 100k makes the difference between getting killed in 3 hits, or getting healed in time. Taking less overall damage allows the healers to heal other people more often without worrying about the tank dying, especially when you're 2 healing to beat an enrage timer.

I'm not too familiar with warrior tanking, but even as a DK (arguably the best class for pure stam stacking) I would still make sure I'm getting the socket bonus on all the gear. He's missing 60 dodge, 60 str, and 120 parry. Using some exp/stam gems instead of putting pure stam in red sockets would also allow him to reforge at least one piece of gear for more mastery instead of expertise.

Two stam trinkets is a little bit excessive for most fights in my opinion, but he isn't the first person I've seen using that exact combination. He may be a little bit better off with the shado-pan assault trinket for mastery and decent on use dodge, or definitely the council trinket for constant mastery, and a battlemaster HP boost on use.

Edited July 1, 2013 by Storm

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I understand that Stamina is a stronger stat for Warriors than other tanks, but 800k still seems a little excessive. I don't think there's any current content where you really need more than 700k, provided you've got enough other stats to keep the damage intake under control. At ilvl 536 I would go a lot lighter on the Stamina and heavier on Mastery, since it improves the uptime on your enrage and indirectly improves DPS output.

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Here's the thing, stamina is the best smoothing stat for a tank IF your healers are not going out of mana. If the healers are having mana issues then that extra stamina is doing nothing and mastery is going to be more effective by far. What this boils down to is most 10man's go Mastery and 25's go Stamina.

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It's not nearly that simple as 10m mastery, 25m stam. Gemming hard stam except for specific needs in 25m is still absolutely wasteful. His most recent kill is heroic Tortos and there's some benefit to gemming stam there, but it's ultimately unnecessary especially in 10m. It is harmful if one takes Quake Stomp into consideration. Even in 25m heroics, I'd consider 800k unbuffed to be ridiculously above and beyond what is useful. By not taking advantage of mastery, he's losing out. Someone said that whether you stack stam or mastery, you take the same percent damage, but you don't. Essentially, stamina is only useful until you have "enough." That point is where even heavy hits will not take you below 50% under normal conditions. Excessive stacks or improper use of active mitigation do not count here. Right now your friend is throwing away healer mana, survivability, and damage. Even in 25m, I've never hit the vengeance cap. Gemming stam for that does nothing, but gemming mastery will give a far better enrage uptime and reduce massively more damage.

I don't know where your friend got this idea that tank stats are bad, but he's wrong. Mastery has no DR and is by far the strongest stat once a tank has the stamina they need. He has far more than enough stam on his gear.

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I just want to add, when I said some 25m tanks max out their stam for vengeance, I meant they do it so they can stand in as much stuff as possible to artificially increase their vengeance. These are tanks in groups that are so strong there's no way the healer is going to let them die no matter what is happening. It's very rare in 10m or 25m to actually cap your vengreance unless you are intentionally taking extra damage.